LJA Interactive

HEADMASTER’S MESSAGE

September 15, 2008

Construction Update

The construction is continuing to be on schedule for an opening in February 2009. The new High School classrooms and laboratories already have a wooden roof on and will soon be clad in a standing seam steel roof like the one on our current High School buildings. The gymnasium has most of the walls constructed and the steel girder supports for the roof are steadily being added. Soon you will see action by the entrance to the school when we start to construct housing for the auxiliary pumps that are needed to pressurize the water for the fire hydrants at the back of the campus where these new buildings are located. The building for the pumps is about 30 x 20 feet and will be located beside the main entrance driveway somewhere below the kindergarten classrooms. This will cause us to loose about 15 parking slots in this area for about a month while it is constructed.

CTP4 Tests

Le Jardin Academy’s students in Grades 2 - 5 are about to take their CTP 4 assessments so I thought I would spend a brief moment talking about them and letting you know how the school uses the scores from these tests. There are two main ways that these tests provide valuable information to the school. Firstly, they let us, the instructors, know how well the students have retained the information that they were taught in the previous year and allow us to adjust our instruction for the coming year to better meet both the needs of the individual and of the class as a whole. For example, were many of the students in a class to have weak reading comprehension results, their teacher would do some remedial work to help the whole class in this area. If only a couple of students were experiencing difficulties, we would use our resource support team to address the needs of these particular students. Secondly, these tests also help us to identify accelerated students and to address their needs through differentiation of the instruction. We also use the results to see if a teacher is being more successful in an area than the others, so that we can determine if that teacher is using a different strategy. We would then ask that teacher to share this strategy with his/her colleagues.

Please encourage your students to do their best on these assessments and make sure that they come to school well rested this week.

HEADMASTER’S MESSAGE

September 2, 2008

“Homework is a battle ground for many families. Tired parents returning home in the evening to find equally tired children frazzled over sheets of fractions or laboring on a diorama of a scene from Beowulf. Parents find themselves involved in some or all of the work. Trips to the craft store at 8 p.m., shouting matches, and slammed doors are common. In a recent survey half of the parents responded saying that they had had a serious argument with their child over homework in the past year.” This has lead to questions being asked about homework of school administrations.

While the school’s administration is listening to parents who ask for less homework, it needs to be remembered that the majority of parents equate rigorous education and high standards with the amount of meaningful, engaging homework their children do. It is no secret that for students in private schools and in gifted and talented programs and magnet schools, a heavy homework load is given. If those other elite schools expect this of their students, why would le Jardin expect less of its students? In fact shouldn’t all schools expect it?

• We at Le Jardin Academy believe that in order to implement an effective International Baccalaureate Programme, a strong and consistent homework policy is essential. Through a consistent homework program students learn to develop their study skills and their ability to become effective independent learners. Homework for our students not only helps students consolidate their classroom experiences for that day but also strengthens the partnership between parents and the school by allowing parents to become knowledgeable about what their child is learning. In addition, a student’s ability to handle daily homework assignments provides parents with important feedback outside the normal reporting system on how their child is managing in their classes.

• Le Jardin believes that in order to develop the habit of learning independently it is important that a reasonable amount of homework be assigned to its students each day. Students need to establish a consistent routine of doing work outside classes.

• Le Jardin believes that the homework it sets should be relevant and authentic, that is it should be related to the skills and class content of the day. Le Jardin Academy does not subscribe to the idea that all students should necessarily have the same assignments. Homework assignments can be varied to meet the needs of different groups of students. The school believes that homework should be challenging and not simply “busy work”.

From our instructor’s point of view the following are important: